Slavery originally started in America by the deportation of "restless roistering rogues" from England to Virginia. Morgan writes, "England kept them down by the workhouse, by the gallows, by whipping them back to the parish they came from, by sending them off on military expeditions-and by shipping them to Virginia." When these men were sent over to America they had to work and received little pay. Edmund explains that the Virginians found out a way to cheat the workers. They created an artificial scarcity of land, which meant that the workers who were in servitude waiting to be freemen had no where to live so they went back into servitude. They also took off as much as they could off the workers profits through rents, taxes, and fees for the benefits of the burgesses, councilors

and collectors. But by doing this, Morgan believes, put colonies at constant risk of rebellion. As the years went on workers began to get pushed more and more to make profits for who ever it is they have been serving, and Virginia moved closer to slavery than ever.

"Servitude in Virginia's tabacco fields approached closer to slavery than anything known at the time in England. Men served longer, were subject to more rigorous punishment, and were traded about as commodities already in the 1620's."

Finally as life expectancy rose among colonists, it became a better buy to have a slave instead of a servant after the 1660's. Between the years 1700 and 1750 Virginia had imported 45,000 black slaves. Morgan insists that there is no real way to tell how many slaves had been imported, "From stray bits of evidence we do know that Virginians were getting slaves from other sources than the company and what prices they were willing to pay for them." With slavery in effect Virginians could get a maximum productivity out of their slaves. Owners found it profitable to use their slaves every waking second and they were not afraid of rebellion from their slaves because they lived without hope. The only problem that owners faced was that slaves had no reason to work hard. The solution to that problem as found in the book says, "Virginians had to face

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